YouTube Gaming is leveling up with several new features that make it easier to watch videos.

The most obvious change is the ability to use the app in landscape mode. You could always watch videos this way, but now you can navigate throughout YouTube Gaming with your phone or tablet turned sideways.

Navigate the YouTube Gaming app in landscape mode thanks to the latest update.

Another helpful change is a reformatting of chat, which will now overlay the comments when watching the video in landscape. Comments are what they are, but they may be an entertaining addition to watching someone blast the undead.

Scroll through the comments while watching all the gaming action.

Also, you may want to keep a video going while you bounce over to your email. The button to minimize the action and place it atop your home screen is now more prominent. Just touch the icon and move on to what you want to do next. Tap the video and the “X” to remove it.

It’s much easier to minimize a video with the latest update to YouTube Gaming.

You can also change up the region from which you view videos. Head into the settings and select the United Kingdom, Sweden, or elsewhere if you want to find out what games are topping the charts in another part of the world. Finally, your watch history has been cleaned up, with the ability to save for offline access or add to a “watch later” queue from the overview button.

All these changes can be found in version 1.5 of YouTube Gaming. You can grab the update from the Play Store or APK Mirror.

The impact on you: This is a nice group of changes that will make YouTube Gaming easier to navigate and use. The service still has a ways to go when it comes to catching up to the live-streaming popularity of Twitch, but you can’t bet against Google when it comes to competing with any type of online service.

This story, "YouTube Gaming update packs in landscape mode, new chat layout, and other improvements" was originally published by
Greenbot.